Stunt Fighter - suggestions and feedback

I've reached the point in my game development where some feedback would be good.

In the game you fly a plane using the accelerometer. Controls are pretty simple tilt the phone left and right to turn the plane up or down (actually makes sense when you are holding the phone - doesn't make much sense when I write it down...). Tapping the screen fires the plane's machine gun.

The menus all need working on, currently they are just enough for me to test.

I'm pretty happy with the obstacle course mode - I've got a simple level designer so it's just a case of knocking out levels. It's suitably challenging and fun.

I'm less happy with the dogfight mode. It's fun to play, but it's pretty limited in terms of what you can do. I can see a simple survival model, but I'm not sure if that is enough.

I'm a bit stumped as to where to take it though. I can introduce more plane types and maybe some ground targets.

I'm wondering if it needs a bit more structure, maybe some missions so the player has a sense of purpose.

Multiplayer mode is working though it's pretty ropey and missing things like scoring. One problem I've noticed having play tested it against a human opponent is that there's a tendency to just end up circling round each other - I'm not sure if this would be fixed when there are more than two players in the game or if this needs work. I'll do some more play testing with more than two players and bots in the mix as well.

One disappointment is that GameCenter will only support a maximum of 4 players unless you do your own hosting for the game.

Here's a short video - I've been messing around adding a lens flare effect while I cogitate on the game play issues.

Any suggestions on the game play side of things and the graphics would be welcome.

Depending on how fancy you wanted to make it, there are a couple of bombing reticles that were used in combat flight sims.

The simplest one was just a circle that showed where on the HUD the bomb would hit if you released the bomb right now. It had a line between that circle and the center of the HUD because usually the circle was down below the screen level unless you were going very fast or diving.

In 2D, I think it would work really well to just draw that as a dotted line and expected impact point. We did something similar for our old Twilight Golf game, I always wanted to use that in a bombing game: http://howlingmoonsoftware.com/twilightGolf.php

The other kind of reticule was used for longe range bombing, to maximize the distance between you and your target. Basically it would have you fly upwards at a ~45 degree angle at full throttle. There was a vertical line to keep you lined up with the target and a little countdown that would tell you the exact moment to release the bomb. If you timed it correctly, you could accurately bomb things that were impressively far away. The best part was switching to auto-pilot immediately and switching to a bomb view. (whooooooooooooosh, boom)

Not sure if this would work well in 2D, and the best part was watching the bomb's trajectory anyway.

Need to get back on the multiplayer stuff now - if anyones going to iOSDevUK I'll be giving a talk on multiplayer games and GameKit/GameCenter - so I need to get that bit working to have something to show...

Bwa. I think those little screams are going to haunt my dreams. D: That was surprisingly disturbing.

Oh wow, I remember playing this on the Apple II. Amiga version looks and sounds totally different. I remember always having a huge amount of trouble landing the plane as a kid... I'd finish what I was doing, then half of the time when I tried to come back I'd just crash. Ah, memories...